Monday, June 14, 2010

A Short Visit to the South

Hi Jamie!

I love your blog and have been reading it for a while now as I have a dream of road-tripping from LA to New York, detouring through the Deep South. Anyway I am having a small "teaser" trip this August, and am very excited about it.

I fly to Birmingham Alabama to meet my friend and we are taking off from there for only 2 weeks. I was wanting your opinion on some 'must see' sites and places. As far as I know we are driving from Alabama to Huntsville, Nashville and down to Florida (Disneyworld of course!) and I am hoping to get to Memphis if we have time. Do you have a suggested route, which areas first and what/where we should be stopping along the way?

Congratulations on a successful blog and book sales!

Kindest Regards

Koren===

Hi Koren --

Thanks for your message. For your August quick-trip, there are a couple of great places to see. Birmingham itself has a nifty post-industrial heritage park, designed around a statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalwork.

And not far from Birmingham I recommend a stop in Montgomery AL, the state capital, which has a ton of history (Civil War and Civil Rights!) and some good food, too.

In Florida, don't miss St Augustine, possibly the oldest city in the USA, with lots of quaint old buildings, some huge and luxurious old hotels, as well as Alligator Farm, a classic "roadside attraction" with hundreds (maybe thousands ) of live alligators swimming around. On the Georgia coast, Savannah is a very pretty old city -- and if you make it all the way down Florida, Key West is a lot of fun, too.

And if you can swing west, Memphis is indeed great, as are a number of other towns and cities -- New Orleans, of course, plus Natchez and Oxford Mississippi.

You and your friend could squeeze all this (and Disney World!) into a 2-week trip this August, and then you can re-visit the places you like when you finally make your "dream trip" come true.